AMD broadcasts new Radeon RX 480: VR-equipped, at a budget rate

After months of hypothesis, AMD eventually revealed its very own next-technology GPU at Computex 2016 this week. the new RX 480 is a midrange card that AMD claims will deliver dramatic performance enhancements in VR and 3-d gaming. It’s all a part of AMD’s overall approach to lessen the fee of buying into the VR surroundings, even as improving their competitive positioning in opposition to Nvidia’s midrange products.

The RX 480, with a view to deliver on June 29, is a 14nm GPU built at GlobalFoundries. It’s a fourth-generation GCN card based totally at the Polaris 10 architecture. The RX480 will % 2,304 GCN cores, which fits out to 36 compute units. Its boost clock is above 1.08GHz and it’s backed by way of a 256-bit reminiscence bus and either 4GB or 8GB of GDDR5 relying at the SKU. Board energy is 150W and the release fee is $199. Anandtech estimates a clock variety between 1.08GHz and 1.3GHz to obtain AMD’s stated >5TFLOPS metric.

The R9 380X is the hardest opposition AMD has on the $199 rate point (maximum of the GPUs in this bracket are R9 380s, however PowerColor has an R9 380X priced at $199). The R9 380X is a 2048:one hundred twenty:32 layout (cores, texture gadgets, and ROPS respectively) sponsored up by 182GB/s of memory bandwidth. We don’t understand how many TMUs or ROPS the RX 480 can have, however reminiscence bandwidth ought to be an awful lot higher, at 256GB/s (the RX 480 has 8Gbps GDDR5 memory and a 256-bit reminiscence bus).

One persistent rumor we’ve heard is that AMD’s Polaris desktop GPUs could in shape or beat the R9 390’s performance at kind of half of the TDP. That appears pretty practicable based totally on the RX 480’s middle matter (2,304 as opposed to 2,560 on the R9 390), probable higher clock pace, improved performance, and reminiscence compression enhancements that have been delivered in GCN 1.2 and possibly in addition stepped forward with Polaris’ fourth-technology GCN structure. common performance will possibly beat the R9 390 and technique the R9 390X, but at a much decrease charge (the most inexpensive R9 390X is currently $299 at Newegg) and hugely higher strength consumption.

There are a few questions about total GPU efficiency for the reason that RX 450 is rated for 150W, however doesn’t appear to provide as a good deal overall performance as the GTX 1070, which additionally incorporates a 150W TDP — but a board’s TDP rating isn’t constantly an correct instance of its average energy consumption. traditionally, AMD’s TDP scores have tended to consult the maximum strength a design should draw in preference to a real-international metric of how much energy they generally consume. We’ll should wait and test the GPU earlier than we can say lots approximately its electricity performance compared to different AMD GPUs or Nvidia merchandise.

Like Nvidia, AMD is closely talking up Polaris’ overall performance enhancements in VR, although the agency hasn’t unveiled information in this subject matter but. AMD claims that its new $200 GPU can suit the performance of $500 GPUs from the preceding generations in VR, and the agency’s aggressive pricing should deliver it a completely strong foothold in the midrange marketplace. presently, Nvidia’s $199 GPU will be the GTX 960. Anandtech’s Bench lets in us to examine exclusive GPUs in opposition to every other, and whilst there’s no access for the R9 290 in last years’ database, we can compare the R9 390 against the GTX 960:

that is only a sample from the whole assessment; you may view the two cards head-to-head by clicking the link above. If AMD can supply R9 390 performance in a $199 GPU, it’s going to have an massive aspect over the GTX 960. manifestly Nvidia can have a GTX 1060 at some point, however AMD wants to stake out a robust role in this space, and it looks like they’ve were given a potent GPU to do it with.

We’ll have extra info and real overall performance numbers on July 29. live tuned.